SIt's nearly Christmas so everything is beautiful, from the lights decking every inch of your neighborhood to the fact that you're about to get a little vacation. But we also had plenty of things to show you this week, from our favorite Instagram accounts to a tunnel to the sky in a Manhattan train station, and so much more. Here are our favorite, eye-popping posts from this week: Not every Instagram account is pictures of semi-famous tweens or farm-to-table food. There are some very artful, very niche accounts out there that we adore simply for their aesthetic merits. We've compiled a catalog of the ones we follow so you can too.These awesome images from another dimension have not been photoshoppedSThese are the amazing light paintings of Tackyshack, who is really taking this art form to a complete new level. Some of the amazing images in this small collection of his work are crazy psychedelia. Other look like Alice in Wonderland landscapes. And the one above—playing with shadows and subtle abstract shapes—looks like entrances to alternate dimensions.In 1971, an astronaut placed a 3 1/2-inch aluminum sculpture on the moon, igniting an art world scandal transcending our earthly bearings. The long, bizarre tale of "one of the smallest yet most extraordinary achievements of the Space Age" is recounted by Corey Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro over at Slate.We collectively use about a million plastic bags a minute, a figure that will peak during next week's holiday rush. As you're sitting around in a post-Christmas funk next week, consider following the lead of Japanese artist Yuken Teruya, who carves tiny, perfect trees out of the flimsy walls of old shopping bags.SEdward Tufte is a data viz pioneer, well-known for making complex information easy to parse. But the man is also fascinated with manipulating the physical world; he has transformed the rolling hills and wooded terrain of Hogpen Hill Farms in rural Connecticut into a 234-acresculpture garden that's like a modern-day Stonehenge—if those pre-historic folks had access to I-beams, Airstream trailers, and Richard Feynman diagrams.If you've been on the internet in the past month, chances are you've seen a remarkably lifelike portrait of Morgan Freeman painted entirely with the iPad app Procreate. it's so unbelievably similar to the photo that inspired it that many have, quite literally, been unable to believe their eyes. But is there any credence to the deniers' claims?Bizarre New Art Project Stalks Shaquille O'Neal for Custom "Dunk Rig"What if, instead of marketing to a general demographic, you marketed to a specific individual? What if, instead of waiting for a patron to commission new work, an artist simply designed it based on someone's psychological profile? If an online ad asked for you by name, could you resist?The Fulton Street Transit Center currently being built in the Financial District of Manhattan is shaping up to be not only the biggest place to catch a train in the five boroughs, but also the coolest. Where normally you'd expect the MTA to build tunnels through the ground, at Fulton Street they've assembled one to the sky.SBecause it never gets boring to look inside creatures, living or dead, here's Cleared: a photo series by Adam Summers that straddles the super-narrow divide between science and art, showing deceased fish in various states of transparency to expose their complex insides.Behold the Monstrous Beauty of This Year's Coolest Microscopic ImagesSMouse brains! Bat embryos! Hungry algae! Today, Olympus unveiled the winners of the tenth annual BioScapes photography competition, which showcases the best photography captured through light microscopes. The top ten were chosen from a mind-boggling 2,100 entries.The Billion-Dollar Megaprojects That Will Transform NYC By 2030SAs Michael Bloomberg's reign comes to a close, our mayor/billionaire underwriter is talking up his next move, which involves teaching other cities to be more like New York. But behind the scenes, he's also scrambling to push through dozens of building projects that will define his legacy.SCutaway or cross-section drawings are mostly just fancy residues of a long-gone era when engineering and architecture visualisation was based on hand-drawn images that were often closer to art than boring illustration.
A new week brings new questions. Like, how would one recreate the iOS 7 homescreen in Microsoft Word? Or should spires count toward a building's total height? If you've found yourself pondering these things, you can find your answers within the most beautiful items of the week. Car aficionados will readily defend their favorite vehicles as rolling works of art, but art collector Walter Vanhaerent might be the only driver on earth who can definitively make that claim. Because his new Lexus IS 300h hybrid actually paints his portrait every time he hits the road.SPhotographer Louis Helbig is archiving aerial views of Canadian villages drowned by the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway on his website Sunken Villages. The photos are haunting and gorgeous, almost emerald-like, but often difficult to read. Outlines of houses and roads barely emerge from the silt like scenes…SA few weeks ago, a tiny gallery in London was transformed into a scene straight out of the 19th century. Amid piles of sand, a worker donned a silver apron and safety helmet and poured molten hot steel down a track to create long slabs of metal. The man in the apron was Raphael Hefti—not an industrial worker, but an…SThere's something otherwordly about the optical illusions a single string—or 3,000 of them—can conjure up in our brains. It's almost as if a simple fiber installation holds a gateway to a whole other dimension—when, in fact, we're just looking at lines in space. Here, we take a closer look at seven visionaries who can… SAt first glance, The Beautiful Future—a series of paintings made in Pyongyang, North Korea—looks like standard propaganda fare: Happy citizens, lush farmlands, and bustling industry. Except something's amiss: In the background of each painting stands an iconic piece of Beijing architecture—from the CCTV building to…SIn a corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on a factory floor that resembles an oversized assembly line, workers are building entire apartments in days. Most New Yorkers might not realize it, but the tallest prefab building in the country—and maybe the world—is currently taking shape not far from where they live. Gizmodo… Observe, citizens, as this delightfully talented and probably unhinged gentleman recreates the iOS 7 from scratch using only the tools in Microsoft Word. There is no good explanation for this, but I still can't tear my eyes away from it.SAn anything-goes approach to development is a time-honored tradition in New York (see: this plan to fill in the East River). But developers may be reaching a breaking point in Manhattan, where warehouses are being bought to build $100 million single-family homes. SNew York City was a different place in the 1940s. It was a time before video billboards andLED lights, and skyscrapers were still a source of city-wide awe and pride. Everyone who lived in this glamorous city (and everyone who visited) wanted to show those architectural marvels off—and postcards were a perfect…SHappy birthday, you old crumpled wave of steel, you! L.A.'s signature building opened to the public 10 years ago today, giving the city's downtown a much-needed civic boost and cementing architect Frank Gehry's status as a metal god. I wrote a story for this month's Los Angeles Magazine about the building's…
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SIt's nearly Christmas so everything is beautiful, from the lights decking every inch of your neighborhood to the fact that you're about to get a little vacation. But we also had plenty of things to show you this week, from our favorite Instagram accounts to a tunnel to the sky in a Manhattan train station, and so much more. Here are our favorite, eye-popping posts from this week: 
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SA few weeks ago, a tiny gallery in London was transformed into a scene straight out of the 19th century. Amid piles of sand, a worker donned a silver apron and safety helmet and poured molten hot steel down a track to create long slabs of metal. The man in the apron was Raphael Hefti—not an industrial worker, but an…